Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

Pre-Columbian Asceticism: the Tuza-Piartal morphological expectation from
its ocarina CRIA-269
BUITRAGO, Juan Camilo / Sociology Magister / Universidad del Valle / Colombia
GUZMÁN, Adriana / Theory Music Magister / Universidad del Valle / Colombia
PINILLA, Germán / Ethnomusicology and folklore Magister / Universidad del Valle / Colombia
Pre-Columbian Design / Tuza-Piartal Ocarinas / Pre-Columbian
music
If the production of aerophones by the Tuza-Piartal, inhabitants
of Colombia’s southwestern plateau, -1250 and 1500 AD-,
is found within the morphological expectations of this ocarina,
it could be stated that the formal experimentation of its craftsmen
met a musical exploration. Morpho-Acoustics, rather than
a strictly plastic aesthetic experience, –as in Tumaco-La Tolita-
(Buitrago, 2010), is intended.
1. Morphologic expectation in Ocarina 269
Iconic consideration exposes several representation levels in
human creation (Villafañe, 2006). These levels are present in
a context of extreme figurativism (mimesis), in which human
beings created images reproducing immediate reality or, conversely,
radical abstraction (arbitrary abstraction). Where, if
there were a reference, this one had been overcome for the intellectual
game of the craftsmen 1 . We found that in this opposition,
it could be explained the relations that human has established
with images, in an practice of transformation and establishment
on their territory 2 .
If Gombrich (2007) and Huyghe (1977) are right, we may say
that the aesthetic functions of these artefacts has been gradually
reached, almost on the same pace en which pre-historic
human settle-down on a territory. Although this kind of relationship
with these artefacts was present before, it is the awareness
of this concept, what we just recently called aesthetics, that
aroused with the gradual transformation human in a sedentary
beings.
Music archaeology is a research field looking for answer questions
about mankind’s intentionally produced music, on the
basis of archaeological finds. Is the design of a sonorous object
suggesting its potential function? Does the form of a piece follow
an specific organization related to its use as a tool or as an
“operation object” 3 ? Does the form of a piece reveal especific
1 This idea suggests that the crafstman belongs to the historic moment that
conquered conceptual thoughts.
2 The different ways to approach these transformations and stablishment of
concept processes have varied in time, and they have been studied by several
scholars as René Huyghe (1977), Ernst Gombrich (2007) and Erwin Panofsky
(2000).
3 Though it is difficult to establish a difference, we attempt to say that a practical
object respond to basic material human necessities, while an “opperative object”
responds to operations in the magic o shamanic order.
functionalities that require certain improvement in the description
of its form, to which its configuration responded? In spited
of the enormous coincidences among the different types of human
material production, the generalization of this precept it can
be interpreted as conceptual abuse, taking it to the realm of the
ethnocentricity. Perhaps this is the reason why Gombrich posited
that the entire history of art it is not a history of progress
and technical achievements, but a history of new ideas and demands
(Gombrich, 2007, 44).
In several cases, the form of the objects elaborated by agriculturally-based
communities– or their inmmediate antecesors,
followed the cristalization of the natural references presented in
the context in which they inhabited, probably, as scholars posit,
with the goal to appropiate their methaphysics atributes by
mean of the reproduction of their forms: from thrusters carved in
bone with realistic reproductions of a bird through pottery trumpets
elaborated by the Tuza-La Tolita II craftsmen, in detail manufacture
resembling the shell of the cassidae snail, a frequent
specie in the southwestern coast of the Pacific Ocean. In each
one of these cases, the manufacturated artefacts documented,
recorded in their forms and structures, a social sense of taste,
refeering to Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 2010) , and, in strict sense, are
evidence of the thoughts and demands ruling societies every
moment, everywhere. To understand the universe of images belonging
to a society, means to visit their deepth mind pillars, to
contemplate the foundations from where their identity is built.
(Gruzinsky, 2010).
In this general frame of conceptual strain is exposed, the social
relationship between practical function of the artefacts designed
by human, classifiable as prestige goods, tools or instruments, and
the iconographic complexity to which they respond, as a copy of a
surrounding reference in a collective or individual frame.
If the collection of aerophones in the Tuza-Piartal ceramic production
responds to the morphological complexity by the ocarina
CRIA–269 4 , it is possible to suggest that this indigenous community
reached the concept of musical instrument, and, that
the formal experimentation seems to answer specifically for the
quest of quite precise acoustic records. Although in other indigenous
ceramic collections, as Tumaco-La Tolita II- with an admirable
pottery production- , there are reproductions of animals, veg-
4 The globular flute CRIA 269 belongs to the archaeological Tuza ceramic collection
at the Archaeological Museum Julio Cesar Cubillos - Universidad del Valle. CRIA
stands for Regional Center of Archaeological Investigation,
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7